In truth, your search engine rankings don’t get any higher just because you have a larger number of links. On the contrary, some top sites on Google were noticed as having fewer links than most. This goes to prove that with Google, quality scores over quantity (for links, that is).

Here are some do’s and don’t’s to help you optimize your link building strategy.

Do’s:

Posts by Guests: One of the most effective ways for both parties to exchange traffic, guest posts are a great link building opportunities. Don’t delay on this one and watch the benefits trickle in.

1) Comment on certain blogs: Blog commenting could have two different agendas. One being networking and the other aimed at building links. Remember however never to spam and be genuine and considerate in your comments.

2) Baiting links: For those new to blogging, link bait posts refer to thoroughly researched and unique posts, which readers would automatically want to link with, given their superior content value. If you have something like this, personally connect with other bloggers in related fields and discuss prospects of being included on their blogs.

The Don’t’s:

1) Submitting to article directories and directory listings: It’s a needless waste of times to entertain every single online diary.  The same applies to your directory listing strategy.

2) Link building across forums: Much as it entices you, in reality, it’s very difficult to get a decent link from a page, which contains your keywords.

3) Online profiles: Many SEOs think that on obtaining links from deep no PR pages of leading websites, the home page PR will transfer some equity to your much smaller profile hidden deep within the layers. However, most often than not, they pick-on very keywords that are very obscure words and can easily be ranked without links.

4) EDU/.GOV blogs: It’s getting more and more complex for your comments to be approved on both .edu and .gov blogs. Also, generating profiles for those sites does not work too well and the results are doubtful.

5) Automated Submission Software and Paid Links: Avoid these tactic as it pushes your rankings down further. And keep away from the latter.

While the above don’t’s aren’t wrong on their own, it’s just that you are better off sticking to the ‘do’s’ listed above. This way you’ll be able to preserve your SEO too. So wouldn’t you rather have quality over quantity?

A good SEO optimized page title needs to be no more then 70 characters counting spaces. Since your page title is placed in the search results it is important to keep it less then 70 characters. If your page title is more then 70 characters then Google will cut it off in the search results. Titles cut off in the search results have a … at the end of the title and will result in a lower click through rate.

Your keywords are the important part of your page title. You’ll want to ensure your page title lists two or three keywords. It’s best to place the keywords in the title early versus at the end. I recommend focusing on two keywords, but you can push it to three if totally necessary.

You’ll see many sites simply place the keywords in the title with no selling. For instance, you see many titles like the following: Bad Credit Home Loans – Poor Credit Finance.

While the above title is optimized for SEO, it is important to realize that the search engines are not the only ones you need to please. You also need the searcher to click on the title. Adding a boring title like the above can influence how many clicks you get.

I highly recommend you get creative with your page title and try to make it sell. This will drive way more clicks then a boring page title and help differentiate your site from the competition. To add sales flavor to your title you’ll need to understand the mindset of the searcher.

For instance, for someone searching for bad credit home loans, the mindset of the searcher may be a little insecure. This searcher may also be frustrated with shopping from lender to lender trying to locate a lender that will approve bad credit applicants.

By understanding the above mindset of the searcher you could add some sales power to your title and still hit the necessary keywords. Perhaps you create a title, Trouble-Free Bad Credit Home Loans For Poor Credit Finance Applicants. Or even better, Guaranteed Bad Credit Home Loans For Poor Credit Finance Applicants.

The above two titles immediately solves the searchers emotional needs. This will result in a higher click rate then a generic keyword stuffed title such as Bad Credit Home Loans – Poor Credit Finance.

Here are some other tips for your site’s page titles:

1. Each page on your site should have a unique page title and be focused on different keywords. If all your pages have a page title that is too similar then your site could get caught in the Google duplicate content filter.
2. Make the keywords in your title a little different then the keyword in the meta description. For instance, if you place bad credit home loans in your title, use loans for bad credit in your meta description.
3. To maximize click through rates, always capitalize the first letter of each word in your page title. Don’t use all caps or all lower case.
4. Do not repeat the same keyword twice in the title.
5. Try to use semantic related keywords in your title. This will help with Google Latent Semantic Indexing. For instance, a semantic related word to loans, is finance. Don’t use loans twice in the title.
6. The page title should focus on the same keywords as the anchored internal links to the page. So if your page is primarily about bad credit home loans, then the internal links on your site should use the anchored text bad credit home loans.
7. For WordPress blogs the All In One SEO plugin has custom page title management to help you place a unique title on every page.

Based on my five years of testing, good on-page SEO can make a huge difference in your search ranking. Yes backlinks are more important, but don’t underrate on-page SEO. With Google filters if you don’t approach on-page SEO correct your site can disappear.

You’ve probably heard that selecting the right keywords can greatly impact your sites ability to rank in the organic search engine results and get substantial traffic to your website.  With organic search engine traffic being one of the highest converting types of traffic, it is important you get an edge over your competition with your keyword research.

Your objective is to find keywords that have good search volumes that will require the least amount of work possible to beat the competition for ranking in the top 10 of the search results.

Currently, you may be using Google phrase match to measure your competition.  Phrase match simply means you measure the competitive search results in Google with quotations around the keyword when you search. 

When you search with phrase match, Google returns only sites that have the exact phrase.  So if you search for “dog food”, Google will return all the sites with the word dog food in it, but not sites with phrases like food for dogs or premium food for your dog.

Phrase match queries are a decent concept for measuring competition, but they become really powerful when combined with advanced query operators like intitle: and inanchor:.

We know from search engine optimization that it is highly important to optimize your title tag for a given keyword if you want a page to rank for that keyword.  Therefore, when measuring competition it can be assumed that sites that have a given keyword in their title tag are more likely to be optimizing for the keyword.

By using the intitle: advance query operator with phrase match (quotation marks) you can gain a very good idea of the number of competing sites that are optimizing for a giving keyword.  For instance, if you type in the Google Search query intitle:”dog food”, the number of returned results will show you how many sites have the word dog food in the title of the page.  This is a great indication of the level of competition that is optimizing for this keyword.

Next, after you have the total competition for a keyword using the intitle: search query, you can take it one step further by measuring the keywords inanchor: competition.  The query operator inanchor: will tell you how many sites have a given keyword in the anchor/ incoming links to the page. 

Since incoming links with a keyword in the anchored text is of significant importance for search engine ranking you have just taken one more giant step in measuring the competition for the keyword.  One note, when you are doing the inanchor: query, I advise using quotations around the keyword so you get a phrase match.

As an even more powerful tool you can combine the intitle: and inanchor: when searching the competitiveness of a keyword.  So in the Google search box you would have a query for intitle:”your keyword” + inanchor:”your keyword”.  This will tell you how many sites have a title tag with the chosen keyword and incoming links with the keyword.  This is a very focused way to quickly measure the number of sites optimizing for your keywords.

By taking each keyword and recording the search volume, intitle competition, and inanchor competition you can really focus on finding the keywords that will provide you the easiest path for ranking in the top 10.  The nice thing about this method is that it is an easy way to work though thousands of keywords and focus you on the ones that offer the best opportunity to optimize your site for.

Over the last couple years, Google has made some serious strides at the tricky ways that are being used to beat its organic search results.  With Google, it is getting harder and harder to unnaturally influence your website’s organic search engine raking. 

The latest algorithm change in Google, downgraded the page rank and organic search results of sites that were selling link.  These websites that were selling links saw their page rank go lower and also their organic search results while many of the sites playing by Google’s rules saw their organic search engine results improve. 

Did you see your site’s page rank decrease?  My answer is who cares?  Page rank should be the last thing you should be worrying about in your business.  Sure it would be nice to have a high page rank, but in building your website’s organic search results there are so many more things you need to be concerned with.  In short, don’t waste time worry about page rank, especially the inaccurate page rank specified on the Google toolbar.

In building your online business, it is much better to develop a plan of action to make your website improve in the organic search results without just focusing on one factor like page rank.
 
Here are a few tips to get you going with improving your website’s organic search results:

1. Follow your expertise. Following your expertise is much more important today than every before.  With advanced algorithms like Latent Semantic Indexing, it is important to be an expert in your chosen market.  If you are expert you will naturally intertwine related industry words and semantic equivalents into your content.  This will help your website’s content appear very natural which is critical for the next evolution of organic search engine ranking.

2. Plan your site out before developing it. Without a doubt a good layout for your website can improve usability.  In planning out your site make sure you do thorough keyword research and break these keywords into common themes.  Then categorize your content by these themes.  By categorizing your content and site’s design into themes you will be way ahead of most of the sites on the web and positioning your website to rank in the organic search results well into the future.

In addition, a well planned out website will see a much lower bounce rate which is a key metric many search engines are tracking today.  A bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or the percentage of visits in which a person left your site from the page they entered from.  Your website’s bounce rate shows the visit quality and thus a high bounce rate generally indicates that your sites entrance or design aren’t relevant to your visitors.

3. Build QUALITY link reputation. Joining high quality directories and partnering with other high quality websites in your industry will significantly improve your organic search engine results. These days the quality of your links is much more important than the quantity of links.  Joining the high quality directories online can create a huge boost for your organic search engine ranking.  Here are the top directories I recommend as critical:

• DMOZ.org
• Yahoo Directory
• Starting Point Directory
• Librarians’ Internet Index (LII)
• Joe Ant
• Chiff.com

Also, partnering with other high quality websites in your industry will help you build on the theme of your site and pass lots of link reputation.

4. Build tools on your website.  Building online tools on your website is a great way to get others in your industry to link to your site.  These links will look very natural which is a critical component to improving your organic search results.  One example of tools is the comprehensive list at Seo Chat.  For your website dig into your market and look for opportunities for tools that will add online value.

5. Frequently updating high quality content.  Keeping your website’s content updating frequently is a critical component of your organic search engine ranking strategy.  Look for recent news or other interesting fact in your market and create unique content that expands on it with your expert knowledge of the market or industry you compete.  This expert knowledge and viewpoint you provide will help give people a reason to link to your content driving deep links into your site.  Deep links are critical for organic search engine results.

6. Research your competition. Checking out your competition is a very important step in improving your organic search engine results.  Take a look at their site and see what is working and what is not. If possible, try to communicate with users in forums and get feedback on what should or can be improved further.  Look at who your competitors are partnering with and see if you can leverage a content sharing partnership with the same partners. 

7. Repetition is the key to victory. Building a solid business process for your website’s search engine optimization strategy will help ensure your success.  Focus on defining these processes so that you can easily repeat them and transfer them to future employees or interns.   Document the processes or even better record a video using Camtasia.  This way as you hire interns or new employees you do not have to spend tons of time training them.  You simply have your intern or employee watch the video that highlights all your search engine optimization processes and then they are ready to get to work.  Mastering repetition in your business processes can have a profound impact on your business.

In the end, taking a broad approach at getting organic search results will improve your sites performance much better than just worrying about page rank.

So what is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Basically, Latent Semantic Indexing is a fairly new technology which Google and other search engines are including as a part of their algorithm in order to improve search engine results. Latent Semantic Indexing looks to determine if your webpage is relevant by looking for natural patterns in words that are related to the topic of your webpage.

For instance, if you have a webpage related to the theme of computers, the LSI algorithm would scan your site for words actually associated with the term computers. Those words may include mentions of hard drives, Dell, servers, laptops, and software because these words would naturally be associated with content on the topic of computers.

It is very important you understand this concept.  The reason being is that now search engines are not only looking at your main keyword to determine if a webpage is relevant, they are also looking at the whole page and if the naturally related words to your main keyword are being used in the content.

Furthermore you should not just use Latent Semantic Indexing in your web content.  You should also consider using the concept when you get offsite links to your site.  The anchor text of the links and words around the links should include naturally related words.

If you want to stay in the top of the search results well into the future the bottom-line is that you should consider Latent Semantic Indexing as a key part of your SEO strategy.  Use lots of synonyms and related words in your content and links. Get close to your niche and learn the lingo so the related words flow naturally in your content.

Since most sites are not including Latent Semantic Indexing as a key part of their SEO strategy you have the potential to sky above them in the search results!